Who remembers Super Bowl XLVIII? For those of you who are not Roman, who remembers Super Bowl 48, at Met Life Stadium. I'm not talking about the trashing Peyton Manning took from the Legion of Boom and the Seattle Seahawks. I'm talking about the aftermath of the game and the thousands of people that were stranded at the stadium because everyone thought the train was the way to go. Oops! Somebody didn't plan that too well.
As Mike Tyson once said, "everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth".
I mention this because the World Cup will be played at that very same stadium this June and July. FIFA and the people in charge of this event being played at Met Life this summer, apparently weren't at the stadium at 1 AM trying to board the only train that goes to Secaucus Junction to connect to a train to NYC after the completion of the big game.
Maybe they are planning something different, who knows. But soccer, worldwide is much bigger than our Super Bowl and I'm guessing there will be plenty of international guests ascending on the Tri-State area to be involved.
After game chaos! Who knows, maybe these 82,500 soccer fans will have better luck than the 82,500 football fans. Just saying.
Mass transit is a great way to go if the numbers work out. Like, last week, Doris, myself and three others were leaving NYC and we went to Port Authority to take a bus. Not just any bus, the 158 which goes right by our apartment in West New York.
Normally the bus leaves out of gate 202, but after 10 PM they switch it to gate 302. Up we go to gate 302. Never ending lines of people going to gates 303, 305, 323 etc. As crazy as this sounds, this is organized chaos. As the bus arrives, we start making our way through the terminal area, out to the platform then onto the bus. We were probably in the middle of the line and when we got onto the bus, Doris and I were lucky to get seats in the front of the bus while the other three were spread out a little further back. Seems like everyone likes heads to the back of the bus. Me, "front row". You remember that line? Bob Uecker.
People kept coming on. Standing room only. It got a little scary, because we had people stacked in front of us right up the infamous white line that passengers are not allowed to pass. Some worker from the platform yells to the driver, "how many you got?". Over 90 he responds. Four people standing on the front steps were begging to get on. Nope, off. Get off my bus! They were that close. They must of stopped to use the restroom.
Now, the reason we were in the city was because we went to see a musical called the Buena Vista Social Club. It's about a club in Cuba in the late 1950's before Fidel Castro took over. The play was a lot of music in Cuban Spanish.
I was so lucky to be sitting in front of somebody who knew the words to every song and felt it was his job to provide stereo for me. I got used to it until he started clapping in rhythm to the songs. Then it became a little annoying.
But what the heck, he was a proud man enjoying his heritage.
John A Sutich
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